Curator at Large: Four artists to look out for this April

With hundreds of art exhibitions opening each month and thousands of artists making work, it can be easy to miss something outstanding. Here are four artists who our Curator recommends keeping an eye out for, and where you can see their work this month.

Ioana Marie Sisea

In her own words, Ioana Marie Sisea is “interested in the extreme states of being that we are taught to aspire to by Western media that if sustained over time create insanity.” I first came across the artist’s practice in the days of online degree shows, when her work was included in the Royal College of Art’s “WiP2021” interim presentation. Then, it was her ink drawings, featuring brightly coloured, nightmarish characters who reminded me of Miriam Cahn’s work, their faces sometimes blank and sometimes displaying a sense of anguish, that intrigued me. Last month, Fitzrovia’s gallery rosenfeld announced the representation of Sisea, with her first exhibition, The Adventures of Bear Lache and his Friends, opening later this month. The show will feature a collection of new ceramic works, featuring the eponymous bear alongside depictions of two controversial Romanian politicians: 20th Century dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu and Elena Udrea, the country’s more recent tourism minister who is now serving time in prison for corruption offences. The story of Bear Lache is an interesting, and true, allegorical tale about greed and authenticity, which Sisea embellishes with allegory in this new body of work.

Ioana Marie Sisea's solo exhibition 'the adventures of bear lache and his friends' at gallery rosenfeld (37 Rathbone St, London W1T 1NZ) runs from 14 Apr - 19 May.

Trish Morrisey

At TJ Boulting, a stone’s throw from Sisea’s show, is Eye Body, an exhibition featuring artists making work that incorporates their own image. Its title is taken from a series by legendary experimental artist Carolee Schneemann, who thought of the phrase as an apt description for a picture where she was both image-maker – eye – and image – body. In Trish Morrisey’s photographs from her 2006-07 Front series the idea of artist as eye and body, specifically their looking out at the viewer from their own work, takes on an uncanny dimension. For the series, Morrisey approached families on beaches and asked to replace the maternal figure for a photograph that the subsequently ejected woman would take on a camera that had been set up by the artist. This ingeniously simple position-switch is thick with meaning; it feels folkloric in its following of a straightforward premise to a chaotic and menacing conclusion. The artist herself saw the works as being shaped by “what happens when physical and psychological boundaries are crossed.” Beneath this reading is something deeply disturbing that I can’t fully put my finger on. Like a changeling child, Morrisey appears where she isn’t supposed to be with no explanation, removing all familiarity and sense from the normally harmless family portrait format.

Trish Morrisey's work is included in Eye Body, a group exhibition at TJ Boulting (59 Riding House Street, Fitzrovia, London W1W 7EG) running from 29 Mar - 29 April.

Hannah Wilson

Hannah Wilson paints feelings on “difficult mode”. I first saw their work in 2021, when a small painting from their “Nosebleed” series was included in a group exhibition at Rise Art’s Berwick Street gallery. Its subject’s face is almost completely covered by a hand, clasping a shirt to their face. Despite its lack of a visible facial expression – all that we can see is the corner of a closed eye – I noticed a sense of panic, frustration and resignation in the painting. Was this really there, somehow contained within the green shirt and fleshy hand, or something that I was bringing to the picture myself? Wilson still often chooses to omit their subjects’ faces from their paintings; sometimes they are obscured, sometimes out of the frame. Though perhaps expressing different feelings – many images from Last Dance, their solo exhibition at GROVE, are inspired by Charlotte Wells’ wistful, slow-burning film Aftersun – the scenes that Wilson paints remain evocative of more emotion than I thought possible from a cast of largely faceless characters.

Hannah Wilson's solo exhibition 'Last Dance' at GROVE (9B Battersea Square, London SW11 3RA) runs from 18 Mar - 15 Apr.

Andrew North

Andrew North’s easel-scale paintings render landscapes, skies, plants and buildings with an interesting mixture of quietness and intensity. From constructing his own canvas stretchers to repeatedly overpainting his pictures (a process that introduces the risk of, in his words, losing an image), the artist’s process is also both quiet and intense. He is in no rush but, by the same token, will not settle for the path of least resistance. One untitled painting in his solo exhibition Surfacing was completed over the space of 10 years. When I interviewed him earlier this month for Young Artists in Conversation, he explained “I have a curiosity in the depiction and discovery of new perspectives. Unexpected results emerge when a painting is given its necessary period of time to develop.”

Andrew North's solo exhibition 'Surfacing' at South Parade (Enclave 9, 50 Resolution Way, Deptford, London SE8 4AL) runs from 6 Apr - 13 May.